Before sharing more today please allow me to encourage a reading of Elizabeth’s Scalia’s How to Restore a Church in Scandal? Begin with a Collective Confession at the Word on Fire website. This honest look at our priestly call as laity, how we can help the Church not only heal, but be better. Our Shepherds are human, they make mistakes, sometimes these mistakes are Grave with lasting, far reaching complications. (Not unlike our own.) She reminds us too that we begin each Mass with either “Lord have mercy!” or in our public Confession: “I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my thoughts, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.”
August 7 – 16 Bishop Barron’s Catholicism series is available on line for free.
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Today’s (Aug 2, 2018) readings bring to mind journaling retreat experience that I can feel, and see. Janie, the retreat director, gave each of us a lump of clay. It felt cool, and hard in the hand. As a general rule I don’t mark my quilts, I have warm hands so the markings come off long before I get to them. While frustrating it’s helped craft my unique style, because I remained open to simply quilting. At the retreat I held the clay in my hands for a while, warming it up, before attempting to do anything with it. The warmth of my hands softened the clay allowing it become malleable, flexible, movable, freer.
The tactile nature, means for me, that I can, in my head see the ball of red clay in hand, completely encased, slowly becoming warm enough to begin to mold into other shapes. It takes time, patience, commitment. If the clay isn’t warm enough the work is much more difficult, the clay is resistant and requires patience and time.
As quilters, as artists participating in God’s Creative Life it’s essential that we become malleable, flexible, for it is in this that we are able to more deeply respond to the movement, and growth in our work. Placing our life, our work in God’s warm hands means that sometimes we’re fulling embraced in His hands and may not see what’s going on around us. Early on the intention was to make quilts for those whom I love wrapping them in a warm, freshly off the line, filled with sunshine hug from me. So here I am quilting a tree.
A tree, rooted deeply and stretching its limbs in praise of the Creator.
The background color of this is a bit bluer, so a bit deeper and not quite so pink. In a week or so I’ll list all the colors and threads used in this quilt on TerifiCreations. For now, I’m enjoying the process and the journey of this tree.
God bless you!
Teri
Allow me to, belatedly, swing back to the title of this blog. I am available to teach and speak for your quilting guild or faith group. I am working on a topics/classes page for A Quilter’s Heart, and will let you know when this is live.
A Quilter's Heart 